Six months ago Hanson Dodge Creative began working with Humminbird on the complete redesign of their website. Our research and resulting strategy recommendations were simple:

- Selling online was critical to future success of their business

- Consolidation of the systems and data captured by the website would streamline the process of updating and communicating directly with their customers

- They had a community of enthusiasts who loved their product and wanted to engage with them directly

- Rich content and media was key to providing a deeper customer experience

The result? On January 10th we launched the new Humminbird website. Our client wrote a great blog that details the new features and functions of the site. Here is an excerpt from that post:

Here are just a few new features:

• New e-commerce store: Shop for and find the Humminbird products and accessories you want faster with advanced search and filtering. Experience our products with our new gallery viewer and download product manuals.
• Updated Support section: Register your Humminbird products, find Frequently Asked Questions and download the latest software updates.
• Leading Innovation: Everything you need to know about why our technology will help you catch more fish or locate structure.
• On the Water: Join our community: share in stories and information with our new blog. Plus, Meet our professional team and watch them in action on HBTV. You can also win Humminbird gear by sending us your Side Imaging screen shots!
• Company: Learn a little bit about our roots – check out our official area for media, including press releases, awards and job opportunities at Humminbird.
• Find a Dealer: Want to experience our Product in person? Check out our new dealer locator to find a dealer near you, it even maps the results!

Our website is built on a platform that allows us to continually update, refine and refresh the information. So please come back again and again, or you can always get latest news and updates sent to you directly by subscribing to our newsletter and our blog RSS feed.

We hope you like the improvements and as always welcome your continued feedback.

Thank you and enjoy.

Earlier today, Hanson Dodge Creative launched the first iPhone-optimized site that we’ve created for one of our clients, Trek Bicycles. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, I invite you to pop over to the site and take a ride. We’re really excited about the new site and are fortunate to work with forward-looking clients who engage us on projects like this. These are the types of projects that make being a designer or developer worth it.

Yesterday, the New York Times published an interesting article that spoke about a spike in Google’s traffic on Christmas, ostensibly from users who had just received iPhones for the holidays. The traffic from iPhone users eclipsed that of established, entrenched mobile OS providers. Here’s the really interesting part of the article:

“The data is striking because the iPhone, an Apple product, accounts for just 2 percent of smartphones worldwide, according to IDC, a market research firm. Phones powered by Symbian make up 63 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, while those powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile have 11 percent and those running the BlackBerry system have 10 percent.”

So, with just 2 percent of the market, the iPhone already registered higher web traffic volumes than platforms that when combined, hold 84 percent of the current market. From my design-centric point of view, I can only deduce that people with existing smart phones do not use the web functionality of their phones and that the interface design of the iPhone makes mobile web browsing a viable, if not liberating option.

We’ve seen the same trend. In fact, it’s even more pronounced than Google’s numbers. In our own traffic logs, and in some of our clients’, we’ve noticed a meteoric rise in of the number of iPhone and iPod touch users. Overall, we’ve seen iPhone and iPod touch users, with .2 percent of traffic, register an order of magnitude higher than the next closest OS - Symbian, coming in at .02 percent. This is an unscientific look at the numbers, but it does seem to indicate that the iPhone is in a league of its own when it comes to mobile browsing.

For those of you who love lists, here’s how we see the OS traffic levels shaking out currently. Again, the jump to the iPhone and iPod touch was an order of magnitude from the closest competitor, Symbian. Any platforms not listed were below .01 percent of traffic.

1. Windows
2. Macintosh
3. Linux
4. iPhone/iPod
5. SymbianOS
6. Danger Hiptop
7. Playstation 3
8. Palm OS
9. Nintendo Wii
10. Sun OS
11. Playstation Portable

For me, this project was the first one that really made me believe in the future of the mobile web. I’ve been designing for the web for a decade now, and although I’ve done my fair share of mobile projects, none of them ever felt like a viable substitution for a full browser-based experience. The iPhone is changing this, and will hopefully pressure other mobile platforms to improve the browsing experience for its users.